According to a Populus poll for The Times,  the Tories are on 30%, UKIP have surged to 19%, Labour fell to 16%, the Liberal Democrats are on 12%.  The Greens are on 10% and the BNP trail with 5%.  The BNP will be lucky to get a seat…

Yesterday Guido did momentarily consider voting for Fine Gael, Libertas however have guaranteed one more vote in Wexford today.  This is obviously not some cheap photo-opportunity publicity stunt putting words in the mouth of page three girl Amy Diamond :“I am delighted to bare all for Libertas. What have MEPs got to hide?  I want them to get everything off their chest like me. Stop covering up if they’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”

Robin Matthews, who leads Libertas in the UK, makes the point that: ‘The expenses scandal is rife in Europe, it is not just our MPs here at Westminster with their noses in the trough. Greater abuse is taking place at the European Parliament. The only way to sort this out and make change is by MEPs baring all and letting us see what they have spent our money on’.  Quite.

Good spot by Tory Bear, this is apparently his first Twitter and is supposedly a genuine reply to Austin Mitchell MP.  Get ready, Nick Brown is one of Gordon’s most trusted confidantes…

UPDATE 12.10 : Nick Brown’s Twitter account has been deleted.  Think that suggests it was genuine.

Not a single voter had the opportunity to mandate Gordon Brown to be Prime Minister – his thugs even scared off internal party rivals – now the Prime Minister without a mandate wants a quango without a mandate, with placemen appointed by politicians.  Where do the voters and taxpayers come in to this equation?  We have been here before, the Commissioner for Standards was a political appointment to watch over the integrity and honesty of politicians.  When Elizabeth Filkin naively took her job seriously she was hounded out of office.  Not exactly a good precedent for “independent” regulation.

We need reforms that make politicians more directly and immediately accountable to voters.  Douglas Carswell is on the money, we want the power of voter recall for underperforming politicians, we need to be involved in the open selection of candidates before every election.   We need to empower voters, not the party machines.  Too many constituencies are the permanent property of lazy, sleazy politicians.  The worst expenses abusers were in the safest seats.

Yesterday Guido spoke to a number of UKIP staffers – they were saying they are overwhelmed with new support.  They were particularly excited by the cross-over from former Labour voters.  UKIP plan to run a bigger poster campaign than they did at the last Euro-elections.  Punters are even betting on them beating Labour for third place.  Tebbit was right, UKIP look to be the big beneficiary of the revulsion at the expense scandals engulfing the three major parties.

For the euro-elections YouGov have the Tories on only 28%, Labour on 22%, LibDems on 19% and UKIP have risen 12 points this week to 19%, the BNP are on 4%.  Despite Labour propaganda about the dangers of the BNP, it looks like it will be UKIP who are going to be the big winners from the anti-political zeitgeist.

Tebbit has chosen his words carefully, he says don’t vote for the major expense fiddling parties, don’t vote BNP, vote for the other minority protest parties. By that it is taken he means “Vote UKIP”.  He could equally as well also mean Jury Team or Libertas.  This could be an interesting euro-election…